I try to balance the Workers as I would if they were all in one city but I've having trouble with commuting. Prior to the patch this was a known problem and I was hoping it was resolved due to this

• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.

But I'm still having trouble getting the accurate commuting. I have

7k workers in City A (Low wealth)
5k jobs in City B (Low wealth)
2k jobs in City C (Low wealth)

Those numbers should add up but the numbers I'm experiencing are

1k commuting out in City A
2.5k commuting in City B
1k commuting in City C

I have plopped all mass transit available to each city. Each city has a Bus Terminal and CIties A & C are liinked by train in addition. These numbers do not add up and that haven't changed much at all before patch 2.0. It not so much of a problem in Cities B & C but I have an occasional buildings close due to lack of workers during shirt changes. However, in City A it is very problematic and leads to people running out of money, abandon buildings, and a homeless issues. (I yell at them, "Get a job you bums" Grrrrrr)

So, I'm asking if any of you guys have had better luck with commuters, and if so, how do you go about it.

Thanks.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 04/23/2013 19:59:38

I'm having issues with this also. It makes me rage quit the game. I don't understand how EA/Maxis can be all about "you need the internet to play because our regional cities game play is where its at" then.. the cities don't do anything for each other.. It's stupid.. I have like 2136 $$ workers in one city.. 2300 $$ in another city and only 36 commuters.. It's dumb.. and now I am raging just typing this..

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGECITY! where you need the internets to play our game but the game doesn't like to use the internets!!! HAHAHA JOKES ON YOU!!

maybe the raging quit is part of the plan to get buy with 13 servers.. can't have too many on at the same time because 75% of the populace is rage quitting after 10 mins...

"NOT ENOUGH MONEY" "TOO MUCH CRIME" "MOVING BECAUSE EA IS TOO BUSY BENDING YOU OVER FOR YOU TO RUN THE CITY I WANT TO LIVE IN"

If you look even closer at your numbers you will see that in your 1 city it will say how you have say 300 people commuting out. Then when you look at the industrial city it will have say 600 jobs available with 100 jobs filled.

So even though you have 300 commuting out only 100 will actually make it to the other city... and the other 200 just dissapear.

This goes back to the whole phantom population issue where as 1 sim actual =3 or something like that. Either way their math just doesnt add up and it makes trying to accomp[lish the task of commuters filling jobsin other city impossible.

At first I thought well maybe ill add regional buses etc to help commuters but they go unused. So you end up with like 1000 open jobs with maybe 300 filled and then another 1000 unemployed that will never go to the other city for a job.

I even tried to equalize it out by adding commercial to the residential city to fill the gap of jobless there but the gap between employed and unfilled jobs between both cities only gets greater and greater

Also I believe that if you had a residential/ commercial city and an industrial city eventually the neighboring city doesnt supply enough frieght to fufill the orders in the res/com city.

I found it still broken, but with a substantial improvement in the education commuting. Before the patch i almost never got regional education working, except for a couple of cities, while now it seems working.
But it seems still only a partial fix.

I think, as long as, everyhting doesn't have a home, and restart each day to fill all the mechanics, agents will never work.

They have to setup specific paths for the sims, and stick with them till something happens (age, disaster, a better job, a better school, etc...) otherwise, we conitnue to see some number one day and totally different numbers the day after.

I did the same experiment as you and found that once you get over about 1k population none of the numbers in the population details add up. That plus the fact that the RCI demand indicators are pretty much worthless means everything you do in the game regarding balancing is pretty much a shot in the dark guess work especially if you are balancing among multiple cities. Hopefully by 5.0 patch they will have fixed these things.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 04/24/2013 10:43:16

You should do some more research about freight and possibly other aspects because C doesn't not require freight, C shops will automatically generate it. You only need a places to ship freight to keep your I happy, which can be accomplished with a trade depot/port with the freight addon in lieu of C buildings.

As for the Phantom population, this only effects your total populations, which is determined from your [(workers+ shoppers) * inflation] formula. Workers/shoppers and other information displayed in the "detail" tab of your population is not inflated. See here for more info on population inflation http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/75/9359265.page

You basically have a gist of these elements but are lacking a complete understanding.

As far as the commuting problem your experiencing, it's opposite of my problem. My cities with jobs (no residents) get more sims commuting in than my Residential city (no C or I) have commuting out. Even tho my I & C cities do have some workers commuting in, and sometimes it's barely enough to keep the buildings running (I, C, and/or Utilities), it still doesn't match the number of workers available in my Residential city.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 04/24/2013 11:13:30

@Deadzors, I made three attempts at this because of the size of the maps and looks like it is not working out it is sad because Stone Librande had said this can be done and it is not working. I am trying not to be negative but it is getting hard not to be, I could just make all my cities just have the RCI element but it is the principle of the game and what was put out "build the city your way" and to me you are limited. I hope it works out for you.

ArjoAssassin wrote:I'm having issues with this also. It makes me rage quit the game. I don't understand how EA/Maxis can be all about "you need the internet to play because our regional cities game play is where its at" then.. the cities don't do anything for each other.. It's stupid.. I have like 2136 $$ workers in one city.. 2300 $$ in another city and only 36 commuters.. It's dumb.. and now I am raging just typing this..

It's a bigger joke when trying to play this "regional cities game" when your fellow players come take a look at your "city" and see what you saw in your city 10 or more minutes ago.

Dogstar23 wrote:I did the same experiment as you and found that once you get over about 1k population none of the numbers in the population details add up. That plus the fact that the RCI demand indicators are pretty much worthless means everything you do in the game regarding balancing is pretty much a shot in the dark guess work especially if you are balancing among multiple cities. Hopefully by 5.0 patch they will have fixed these things.

Only those that are patient will still be playing if it make it that far and if EA does not abandon this project by then. It is so hard not to be negative because the game has so much potential and you really want to like it. I may still be playing off and on because I throw nothing away and I still have my copy of Duke Nuke'em(haha).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 04/24/2013 11:30:10

Gilgameesh wrote:I found it still broken, but with a substantial improvement in the education commuting. Before the patch i almost never got regional education working, except for a couple of cities, while now it seems working.
But it seems still only a partial fix.

I think, as long as, everyhting doesn't have a home, and restart each day to fill all the mechanics, agents will never work.

They have to setup specific paths for the sims, and stick with them till something happens (age, disaster, a better job, a better school, etc...) otherwise, we conitnue to see some number one day and totally different numbers the day after.

I was having some trouble with student commuting as well, I placed an Elementary school in my I city, I couldn't get any students. Next, I placed a community college in my I city, and I did get around 250ish students, so it started to work. Maybe elementary schools won't bring in commuters, I'm not sure as of now.

What I've noticed about worker commuting numbers, they increase at the start of the work day, and will decrease at the end of it, this sorta makes sense. But it seems very few like to commute for the night shift. Out of 5k jobs, I can reach up to 3k commuting in during peak hours of the day but it will drop near 1.5k at night.

Dogstar23 wrote:I did the same experiment as you and found that once you get over about 1k population none of the numbers in the population details add up. That plus the fact that the RCI demand indicators are pretty much worthless means everything you do in the game regarding balancing is pretty much a shot in the dark guess work especially if you are balancing among multiple cities. Hopefully by 5.0 patch they will have fixed these things.

I basically ignore RCI demand and just go off the population details. It doesn't really work like old Simcity's, they'll basically build anything in this game, then abandon if there is demand. From not enough workers, skilled workers, enough places to ship frieght, not enough money(lack of jobs?), not enough shoppers ect ect. The details tab is my new "RCI Demand" meter. I don't really mind this new mechanic tho, it works decently.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 04/24/2013 11:02:00

It's a bigger joke when trying to play this "regional cities game" when your fellow players come take a look at your "city" and see what you saw in your city 10 or more minutes ago.

MMO my *.

I also don't like the real time aspect of this game, or the lack there of. I'd love to see agents commuting in real time from others cities in a true one world region. But the main reason this can't be the case is because every city has it's own time, and adjustable rate of time. So each other city in the region is semi simulated based on the last known info (save) the server has. Unless time elapsed at the same rate and elapsed while you're not playing, this can't be the case.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 04/24/2013 11:08:55

One thing they could do to fix the issue would be to have the data provided in the population details window be based on the aggregate numbers from the previouse full day cycle with inputs from all cities in the region. Trying to have real time numbers as the do now may be too problematic to fix especially when each city has its own clock and potentially different clock speeds. I'd be happy to ge aggregated daily numbers instead.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 04/24/2013 11:25:44

Dogstar23 wrote:One thing they could do to fix the issue would be to have the data provided in the population details window be based on the aggregate numbers from the previouse full day cycle with inputs from all cities in the region. Trying to have real time numbers as the do now may be too problematic to fix especially when each city has its own clock and potentially different clock speeds. I'd be happy to ge aggregated daily numbers instead.

May be true because you go to one city and it is night and the next it is day. The AI system is not perfect and that may never be 100% fixed.

The numbers on the second two cities would be correct. If you have 5k jobs then you have 2.5k per shift. The 7k workers and only 1k currently commuting is a different story. My experience is the opposite. The commuting out is correct, but the commuting in is wrong. That's assuming there are no jobs in the residential city at all. If you actually have jobs then the population details report understates jobs and it's not to tell how many actual unemployed you have available to commute.

When it comes to the city you're actively managing what's really happening in the city is what matters, not the population details report. When it comes to other cities it's the population details report numbers. You'll only get as many commuters out as the population details report says there jobs in that city even though there may be more actual jobs.

My experience is commuting in is totally whacked. It seems to be using outdated data there. Adding jobs in another city seem near immediate in it's impact on workers in other cities when you view those cities. With workers actually arriving it seems the updates are extremely slow. I started with four houses then increased it to 9 in the residential town, but the town with the jobs just got a number of commuter consistent with just having the original four houses. I ran, at least, two game days and it didn't increase to 36.

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